I am feeling discouraged and stressed, but that's okay. 

My conversation.

That's an extraordinarily lucky segue into the other prime component of my recent internal discussions: what do I really have to say? and precisely why, where, and how?

A year ago (to the day, nearly,) Brent and I semi-ironically watched a bunch of Disney movies from our childhood, and I wrote the very first and second works for Extratone, entitled "Stairs, Wiggling," and "Johnny Tsunami 6: Separate, But Equal," respectively.

I think it's possible that they are also the first and second most entertaining compositions I'll ever birth, but it's interesting, in retrospect - even in the midst of some very taunt bitterness - my newfound commitment to incubating my emotional functionality was evident in the way I spoke of Furious 7. It's relevant to myself and my own personal development, which, clearly, is our primary beat, to this day.

And I'd spent 2015 saying some truly hilarious shit on Drycast, Honk, and the off-record conversations I had with Brent, in between, but I'd been under the influence the entire time. During the making of my Toyota Avalon review - debatably Honk's peak - I was high on adderall, alcohol, and some very good cocaine. Brent and I truly became our own, ultra-bitter, highly-exclusive society of hatred and maniacal, recklessly loathsome irreverence. I was sharp, witty, and utterly miserable. By early Winter, my grief was really gaining ground on me. After hyper-focusing for a month and half getting Feebles to print, I ran out of distractions. By late Spring, I'd lost my job and escaped as completely as I could into Eve Online. 

And then - in June - I met Eryn, who'd lead me back to Earth, teaching and changing me far more than anyone I've ever encountered.

But that's a story for another time.

I wrote and said a lot in 2015, and most of it's pretty sublime, by my standards, but also entirely useless. Drycast was hilarious, yes, but my then-primary means of hysterical spewing really just served up a realization: while some of my arguments were very entertaining and intelligent, none were relevant. I'm thankful I managed to be as receptive as I was to the new perspectives from friends old & new that were graciously presented to me while hosting that show, but after it'd spun out, I found myself lamenting the opportunities I'd missed in consistently sacrificing any real depth to the idol of entertainment.

I'm pretty convinced that those few months between the last episode of old Drycast and Extratone's founding were the worst I will ever experience, mostly because I perceived my future as in absolute zero status. It was utterly silent, wholly peaceful, and... identical to death, really.

(I recently said something like "Feebles was my critique of peace, and Extratone is my manifesto against it," but it's also a means of finding and providing an alternative, in many ways.)

In the midst, of course, I put many 'a' manhour into my own poetry collection, feeding my obsession with revision with a boatload of adderall to a degree that I forgot to continue drinking alcohol. By the time I figured out what the hell my withdrawals were, I thought I'd just hold out the rest of the way to sobriety, leaving myself with my fairly rudimentary publication, and an empty schedule. And it was on Amazon, there, yet I could not sincerely find it within myself to recommend it to potential customers over Rupi Kaur. I missed my tractors and found peculiarity in my waking post-mortem drear, and so fucking what.

I can't give you a specific date, but something very profound happened, then, while I was left alone in silence with my exponentially growing fear of death: I realized that the legacy of an amplifier and shepherd of relevant voices was vastly more preferable to one consisting of my voice, alone.

In my waywardness, I'd been allowing myself my first opportunities to truly recommune with my punk friends from high school, without my blinding adolescent distractions, and I extrapolated from Feebles 'silence(peace) = nothing but death' argument, determining I'm here, and I want to fucking live, which simply meant existing in the antithesis of death... NOISE.

For the first time since Junior High, I began to explore the prospect of Web Development. The name 'Extratone' was first or second on my list. The Twitter username was free, and the dot com was up for auction. I won it in early April, and the year, since has unquestionably been the most significant of my entire life, to date.

Thanks, WordPress...........

In sincerity, though, I must (continuously) thank you.

If you're still reading, you're more likely than not one of the primary reasons I am still here. 

Heavy stuff, eh?

Till next time, 
David